Some of These Taste Better Than Expected

It’s funny to look at the state of the candy market currently and see how weird it’s gotten. It’s pretty recent that just about every candy brand has gone hard on variety of flavors, trying to find any version that will connect with users and sell more of their sugar-coated flavor bombs. Back a couple of decades ago it was shocking when Skittles went from having one variety (the five-flavor pack we know as “Original” now) to Wild Berry and Tropical varieties as well (is Tropical even sold anymore?). But now it feels like every week some candy bar or flavor mix has a new varietal out. With nuts, without, more caramel, white chocolate, sea salt, rock salt, freeze dried, zero Kelvin… It’s a lot.

M&Ms aren’t immune to this, either. Where the brand at one point was just plain and peanut, now there’s more varieties of the chocolate candies than (seemingly) there are grains of sand on a beach. Almond was a limited release variety for years before it joined the brand officially. Peanut butter was then added in 1992, with Crispy M&Ms following in 1999. Flavors have exploded since then.

So today we’re going to look at three varieties, from the more basic to the truly weird, to see what M&Ms are up to and if some of these newer flavors are worth picking up:

Dark Chocolate M&Ms

This is probably the simplest change to the formula you could expect. “Let’s replace the regular chocolate in the candy pieces with a slightly different kind of chocolate.” I’m honestly surprised we don’t have more versions of this in white chocolate, semi-sweet (although you can get semi-sweet minis in the baking section), extra dark, and more. Dark chocolate is the primary “alternative” that keeps the function of the candy bits the same without other fillers in the mix, while still feeling like a simple M&M.

They’re good. Long as you like dark chocolate at all you will like these. They aren’t a very strong dark chocolate, lacking much of that hard bite I’d commonly associate with a really dark version. They’re lightly sweet and very smooth, making for a very crunchable little bite. I frankly think you could probably hand these out to people instead of the regular and many might not even notice (unless they eat M&Ms pretty regularly). They look and feel like M&Ms, just very slightly different.

Effectively they’re a very “safe” choice, so long as you like dark chocolate. They’re about as minimal a change as you could expect from the brand, but that doesn’t make them bad. I’ve eaten a couple of share-size bags of these over the last couple of months and they suit my chocolate cravings quite nicely. In fact, their darker flavor is so nice that when I get an M&M made with their more “normal” milk chocolate, it tastes maybe too sweet to me now… as we’ll get to soon.

Pretzel M&Ms

M&Ms has been putting different fillers into their candies for a while now, like the almonds and peanut butter versions I listed above. Swapping one nut for another makes sense, and I’m sure if the shapes were right we’d likely get things like cashew M&Ms or walnut ones. Anything that makes sense to cover in chocolate and shove into a candy coating. But that also means that if the size and shape is just right, just about any filler can go into the candy. And thus we have pretzel bits in candy form.

Pretzel M&Ms are a pretty basic candy. A little sphere of pretzel is coated with chocolate and then candy coating, and you’re done. These are larger little candies than your average M&M, maybe even dwarfing peanut M&Ms by a decent margin (admittedly I don’t eat the peanut ones so I’m not sure of an exact head-to-head size comparison). They are fat and substantial little bites, but that’s part of what I like about them. They feel big, so I only pop one of these at a time into my mouth (as opposed to two to three that I do with a more standard sized M&M).

The flavor is pretty solid, too. The pretzels have a light saltiness about them which mixes well with the chocolate. You get a satisfying crunch when you bite in, and the candies have a very good chew. It can be fun to bite in so you can get a little of the chocolate outer layer to pop off, and then taste some of the pretzel underneath on its own. These are a full eating experience, with different ways to eat and enjoy that can be quite satisfying.

The only real complaint I have about them is that they are sweeter than the dark chocolate ones, which are the variety I’ve really grown to enjoy. If these came as a dark chocolate pretzel version, I would be all over them in an instant. They’re very good, make no mistake, but once you get used to slightly less sugar in the M&M flavor it can be hard to go back.

Peanut Butter & Jelly M&Ms

So here is my dark secret: I hate peanut butter and jelly. On their own I find each condiment to be quite good. I enjoy a good bit of toast with melty peanut butter on it, and I think jelly can be quite delightful on toast, English muffins, or just about any other application. I really hate the two, though, when they’re mixed. Honestly, I just don’t like peanut butter when it’s mixed with anything, as I find the flavor combination of peanut butter and chocolate to also be quite gross. I’m strange, and I accept that.

What was weird to me, though, was that I actually didn’t hate the peanut butter & jelly M&Ms. While I dislike the traditional peanut butter M&Ms, there’s a weird flavor combination going on here, in the mixing of the peanut flavor, the weird chemicals they pretend to be jelly, and the chocolate. It mixes together and creates something that doesn’t quite taste like anything listed on the package… and somehow that actually makes these candies good.

Eating one of these feels like a flavor journey. You get the instant pop of the chocolate, and then the smooth sweetness of the peanut, which feels more mellow here than it is in the standard peanut butter version. But then the flavor kind of evolves on the back end as the jelly comes in, leaving a fruity aftertaste on the palette. It’s unlike any chocolate candy I’ve had before, and it certainly tastes better than I would expect from something calling itself “peanut butter & jelly”.

In fairness I wouldn’t have gotten these normally, but my wife saw them and thought they’d be awful, so she had to try them. We were both happily surprised that they weren’t bad. They aren’t a version of the candy I’ll go out of my way to have, but I have grabbed a couple when she’s had the bag open recently. That’s more than I expected from a flavor combination I totally expected to hate, so take that as you will.

Final Thoughts

My verdict is that the dark chocolate M&Ms are still the best, but the other two varieties here are really good as well. I like chocolate and pretzels so I will happily get the pretzel M&Ms again, and while I wouldn’t buy the peanut butter & jelly M&Ms on my own, I could see why people would. They’re weird, but edible. All of these were winners, in their own ways, and worth picking up if you have any interest in these flavors. Sometimes weird isn’t bad at all.